Review of Memento (2000) by Amheretojudge — 25 Aug 2019

If I could remember it, I'd call it the most malleable mythology I ever faced.

Memento Nolan's career defining and signature marking neo noir film is a bold statement on not just filmmaking but entertainment industry too. And he does it byIf I could remember it, I'd call it the most malleable mythology I ever faced.

Memento.

Nolan's career defining and signature marking neo noir film is a bold statement on not just filmmaking but entertainment industry too. And he does it by raising a simple question. How far should you go as a storyteller to express yourself and communicate coherently to your viewers? In this case, it is evidently reported for 8 years to put all this puzzled work in one big crime scene. Leanord (Guy Pearce) is suffering from short term memory loss and for a guy who can barely survive going through his own routine, he has embarked himself to cross a big revengeful mountain.

To be honest, the film does most of its magic on paper. What's to wonder about is, Nolan who used props and elements for the style in Following, has now cornered himself into being obliged to use those same props. But this is Nolan, he doesn't bow down to such limitations in the script. He has simply jumbled up the events for some levity and uses it to give you enough reason to hang on to this trippy ride. Once again, the editing gets a shout out, But I'd also like to mention Nolan's choice of picturization of those abstract yet contextual repetitive part of the act. He hides the facts by acknowledging the fact that he is hiding it. Nolan has confessed that he loved using the similar picturization of both the flashbacks and real time screenplay that he learned from Terrence Malick's style, especially from The Thin Red Line.

Let's follow the lead character Leonard and Pearce embodying a tattooed (scarred) personality as such. The bluff of Nolan is how to make him sympathetic that goes unnoticed in the film. His handicapped part of the personality is abused over and over by the other characters that actually mirrors their own figure, and as a result you are worried sick and exhausted by this experience. And Pearce plays it simply as Nolan reveals it in the "guilty" section of the storytelling, later in the film. The assumption is what leads us into this misunderstanding. Not the props, not the Memento.